In September 2009, the US withheld the issue of a visa that would allow Mr Sjamsoeddin, a former army general then serving as a senior presidential adviser, to accompany President Yudhoyono, who was about to attend the G20 leaders summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Mr Sjamsoeddin was subject to a US Department of Homeland Security recommendation that he be denied entry owing to suspected involvement in "terror activities" and "extrajudicial killings''.

The US embassy cables leaked to WikiLeaks, and provided exclusively to The Saturday Age, show that the US embassy in Jakarta urged that Mr Sjamsoeddin still be allowed entry, lest the issue become an "irritant" in relations between Jakarta and Washington.

Advertisement

"We note that as a key adviser to the Indonesian President and possible cabinet appointee, Sjamsoeddin's travel to the United States would facilitate and strengthen US-Indonesian ties,'' the Jakarta embassy argued. "Sjamsoeddin provides guidance and counsel to President Yudhoyono on a number of issues of importance to the US, such as mil[itary]-to-mil[itary] ties, which are a cornerstone of our efforts to ensure regional stability."

The allegations against Mr Sjamsoeddin included that, while serving as an Indonesian special forces commander in East Timor, he was responsible for directing the Santa Cruz massacre that claimed the lives of more than 250 East Timorese pro-independence demonstrators on November 12, 1991.

It was also alleged that Mr Sjamsoeddin was responsible for widespread violence committed by Indonesian troops in Dili after East Timor's August 30, 1999, independence ballot.

Mr Sjamsoeddin submitted a statement to the US embassy seeking to rebut the allegations, claiming that he had not been at the Santa Cruz massacre but had been rescuing ''journalists from Timorese [Indonesian army] officials who were angered that the journalists had accused them of being involved in clandestine activities''. Mr Sjamsoeddin also claimed he had been cleared by Indonesia's National Human Rights Commission for any wrongdoing in relation to the violence that swept Dili in September 1999.

Loading

Mr Sjamsoeddin's denials were accepted by the US embassy in Jakarta, which argued that "circumstantial evidence" linking Mr Sjamsoeddin to human rights violations was insufficient to deny him a visa. But this advice drew a sharp critique from the US embassy in Dili, which drew on United Nations and East Timorese human rights investigations to argue that Mr Sjamsoeddin repeatedly had command responsibility for Indonesian troops that committed atrocities.

The US embassy in Dili concluded that "Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin held senior positions of command responsibility in both 1991 and 1999, moments when atrocities undeniably occurred, and strongly indicate his personal culpability''.